


The Rogue and The Heir

by Grendel



Series: Thronestuck [4]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: AU, AU- Game of Thrones, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Balance of Power, Best Friends, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Middle Ages, Mideval, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Religion, Thronestuck, a song of ice and fire - Freeform, midevalstuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-22
Updated: 2013-01-22
Packaged: 2017-11-26 10:36:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/649637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Grendel/pseuds/Grendel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One-shot tie-in to Balance of Power.</p>
<p>A peek at the youth of the future Lord Equius Zahhak.<br/>Nepeta goes missing shortly before an important coming-of-age ceremony. Sixteen year old Equius takes it upon himself to track her down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Rogue and The Heir

**Author's Note:**

> God damn it, tumblr user palemarried. Why do you have to be such an inspiration catalyst? Curse you and your brilliant suggestions!  
> No but really. This is a little gift for a really rad lady. All the religious mentions herein are inspired by her brilliant god-tier pantheon designs. So go check those out and reblog them all over the place.

Equius had already done this. There was a three year age gap, after all – he'd been thirteen once, too, and he'd gotten this over with then, as was expected. Now it was her turn.  
Why in the names of all the gods a sixteen year old lordling was wasting his time running about with a thirteen year old second daughter of a banner-house was beyond the understanding of anyone in the Stronghold... yet there they were.

But where _was_ that girl?

Tall as he was strong and strong as he was serious, Equius Zahhak looked less refined than one would expect from the heir to the fourth most powerful family in the Empire. But that was what sixteen did to some people – though he was well over six feet tall and equipped with the bulk to bear full war armor, he suffered in other areas. His long hair was greasy in spite of all efforts to wash it, his face suffered blights and blemishes, and his posture haunched in a way that proved he knew it.  
Some young heirs had all the women of their households tripping over themselves to be the first to bed them. Some had all the pretty peasant girls they could ever want to warm their beds, and offers from excited marriage prospects tumbling in regularly. Equius was not some young heirs. In fact, he'd only netted one proposal, and it was tentative at best – the Serket heiress was sure she could do better. Vocally sure.

That on top of his father constantly testing and trying him, forcing him to train _harder_ , to grow _stronger_... it was rather a lot for him to handle. He had no time for girls. Not when there was so much else for him to do.

Such as ready his dearest friend for her Choosing.  
If he could find her.

Choosing was a very serious religious ceremony. When it came to religion, the Empire had a policy of “ _as long as you produce, do what you will_ ”... a fancy way of saying that the Empress could not have been bothered to care unless she was being actively paid for it. But that said, the Twelves tended to be seen as the accepted theology. Twelve child-gods, ageless, each representing a different ideal.  
When a child reached the cusp of adulthood at the age of thirteen, they were expected to select the god that most appealed to them. Sometimes it was a family patron, other times simply a god that the child felt most drawn to. An athletic child might most aspire to the blessings of the Page, god of speed. While a child from a family of healers might follow suit and choose the Witch, goddess of health.

The vast stone halls of the Stronghold echoed with each of Equius's steps. The Stronghold was excessively large, a mountain of a building that took decades to construct. The Zahhaks were naturally large people, but even they seemed small beneath the vaulted ceilings and wide corridors featured throughout the fortress. It was large enough to easily hold the entirety of the (relatively small) House, all of their servants, and most of their banner house, the Leijon family.

Unlike most House capitals, the Stronghold was technically a stand-alone fortress. There was no city or even a village beyond its walls, though it may as well have been a city on its own, and many referred to it as such. It was what it was: a massive, hulking castle that functioned on its own. The nearest proper village was six miles down the road. Those who lived in the Stronghold grew their own crops and lived within the forty-foot high walls. It was also the largest of the House capitals, precisely 900,000 square feet; even the Empire's capital, Beforus, was not so large, though it was more densely populated.

Even with scores of servants and two entire families within the walls, such a massive castle often felt quite empty. And it was easy to loose track of anybody there, especially little girls.

Figuring himself suitably distant from anyone who might hear and disapprove, Equius finally started calling for his missing friend. “Lady Nepeta!” his voice had ceased cracking several months hence, and now had the boom of a grown man. “Lady Nepeta!”  
He opened a door to a room that appeared empty, peering around. “Nepeta?” Nothing. He kept moving.

She had to be here _somewhere_. Adventurous though she was, she did prefer to stick to her haunts within the Stronghold. And more than that, sometimes Equius simply had a sense of where she might be... and he knew that she was close.  
“Nepeta...” he said, voice softening as he made his way into the vast hall of the armory, peering around racks and stands and barrels full of expertly crafted weapons and armor. The Zahhak blacksmiths had a proud tradition, and none in the Empire were better. The Voidlands may not have been rich in conventional things, but they did have mountains to mine and brilliant smiths.

“Nepeta... It’s not polite to ignore people searching for you,” Equius said, voice measured and lower. He just knew she was here. He’d searched everywhere else, and she wouldn’t have gone outside... not today, of all days.  
He stopped in the middle of the hall to listen carefully. And then, sure enough, he heard a soft rustling about teen feet away. When he approached, a small figure greeted him with a sullen mumble. “...Hullo, Equius.”

Nepeta Leijon was thirteen years old, but she was a tiny one - she hardly looked eleven. Where Equius was huge and hulking, Nepeta looked like a mere child. She was tanner than he and covered in freckles: her round babyfat cheeks, her small button nose, down her neck and spattered across her arms and shoulders. She could blame that on too much time playing out near the rocks and the creek outside the walls, uncovered from the harsh sun. Equius disapproved. It wasn’t right for a lady of her breeding to run around like a ragamuffin... though the Twelves knew he’d been guilty enough of going out there with her when he was younger. Vivid hazel eyes peeked out from bangs of dark brown hair that was otherwise cropped in a messy, shaggy bob around her face. Her knees were pulled up and hugged to her chest, hiding the lower half of her face.

“Nepeta,” Equius sighed, looking down at the little girl, “What are you doing all the way over here? You ought to have been in the church half an hour ago.”  
“I don’t want to go,” came the response, muffled by the thick, full skirt of the girl’s dress.  
Equius folded his thick arms over his broad chest. “And why is that?”  
The child buried her face in her knees and shook her head. They weren’t going to make any progress going at it this way.

Equius sighed and crouched down, though even that didn’t put his head on the same level as hers. “Nepeta...” he urged. It seemed strange that such a serious, gruff, huge man could be so gentle. He reached out a hand and so, so carefully, so sure not to hurt her, patted her on the arm. “What’s the matter?”  
Teary, almond eyes peeked out and up at him. “I don’t have one picked,” she said in a tiny voice.

Equius sighed. “Nepeta,” he said, voice knowing and a tad long-suffering, “That can’t be truthful. You always wanted the Rogue. You’ve had her picked out since I Chose.”  
The Rogue was a goddess of the heart - patron deity of anyone who cared for people and relationships above all else. It was a good choice, popular with girls of the gentry and nobility. All the better because it complemented Equius’s own choice, the Heir, a god of strength and traditional patron of House Zahhak. The two were a matched set, together representing internal and external strength.  
And ever since Equius’s Choosing ceremony three years ago, Nepeta had been positive that the Rogue was exactly who she wanted.  
“What is it really?” pressed the young man, reaching out both arms now to grasp Nepeta’s shoulders and encourage to look up at him.

Her head tipped up to him at last. Her face was small and round and freckly in the extreme, and her mouth was drawn up in the center. _The lip of the hare._ A bad omen, and one that made her almost resemble a cat, when paired with her striking eyes.  
If she’d been born any lower, she would have been killed for it at birth. But luckily she was just within the realm of protection from such things, and her parents were kind. And when she was four, she’d met and quite charmed the Heir of House Zahhak. A lucky thing for her, as that managed to put her under his protection. If anyone had a problem with how she looked, they could take it up with Equius. So of course no one did. By this point, it went so unmentioned that Nepeta generally seemed to forget she even had it.  
Still, she spent virtually all of her time with Equius, and if not with him than with animals in the stables and kennels. It suited Nepeta just fine. People didn’t seem to really understand her for other things, anyway.

“...I don’t want to grow up,” she said finally, confessing the real truth of it. Her intact lower lip trembled.  
Equius felt a painful pang in his chest. He’d felt much the same way just before his Choosing. It was a ceremony that did make one an adult in the eyes of those around them. It was a frightening thing, suddenly opening one up to adult responsibilities, adult work, marriage proposals, and the ruling of kingdoms. Equius’s Choosing had come a week before his fourteenth birthday... and less than a month after that his father had forced him to kill a man, executing a prisoner with a blade he’d been gifted at his Choosing Ceremony. It was an intense thing. Equius couldn’t blame Nepeta for being frightened.

But that didn’t mean he could let her get away with not going, either. “It must be done, Nepeta. You are thirteen. It’s high time for you to accept adult responsibility.”  
That was the wrong thing to say, apparently, because Nepeta shook her head and hugged herself tighter.  
Equius rubbed his large hands back and forth along the girl’s arms. “Nepeta... you’re a Lady. You’re a member of a good House, even if it is minor. It has the distinction of being Banner House to House Zahhak. That’s an honor. You will grow up and you will do the Leijons proud. You’ll finish your formal education and be as beautiful and impressive a Lady as any. You’re already well on your way.” She was softening under his encouragements and praise. He went in for the kill. “But you cannot do any of that without doing this first. So now you will get up and you will go to the church.”

Nepeta finally slumped her shoulders and looked at her friend. “...Will you come with me, Equius?” she requested.  
The young man nodded an affirmative without even needing to think about it. “I shall hold your hand the whole way there.”  
The relieved girl smiled, looking even more cattish than before, and flung herself forward, wrapping her arms around the lordling’s neck and hugging him tightly. Equius was stiff and surprised for a moment, but soon relented and hugged her back, as careful as if she were made of glass.

After a moment, he stood and offered a hand, though she didn’t take it, preferring to hop to her feet on her own, spry and athletic little thing that she was. She, so tiny, and he, so large, looked an odd couple. She barely came up to the midway point between his elbow and shoulder.  
Equius’s massive hand completely enveloped her small hand, but they held close all the same, walking through the halls of the keep to the church of the Twelves.

~~~

It was a fine ceremony. Though they started a touch behind schedule, Nepeta’s parents were more relieved that she had been found in time than cross at her tardiness. A far cry from how Equius’s father would have reacted.  
Nepeta was clad in a full skirted dress of olive, a bow of navy fabric trailing down her back and a formal cap and veil in the same color (a nod to House Zahhak, Equius was sure) hiding her hair. She approached the tall, elegant looking priestess of the Jade Order and repeated the lines to complete the ceremony, finishing it with a candle lit at the altar of the Rogue. The candle burned with a pinkish-purple flame, through some magic or science Equius never did understand.

When it was over, the attending Leijons applauded the girl and she returned to her parents to be greeted with pride and praise. Another far cry from the solemn, serious (and much better attended) affair that had been Equius’s Choosing.  
Equius himself lurked in the back, hesitant to draw too much attention to himself. This was Nepeta’s day, and though he was of much more important birth than she, she deserved the attention.

But when it had died down enough that the adults in the room were conversing on their own, Nepeta naturally slipped away to go sit in the very back pew, beside her dearest friend.  
“You did very well, Nepeta,” said Equius. “I told you you would.”  
Nepeta grinned. “Yes, I know you did,” she responded. “You’re usually right about that sort of thing.” She leaned sideways, resting her head on his upper arm.

Her eyes fell down to her friend’s lap, where there was a small bundle wrapped in blue fabric, twitching ever so slightly. Equius had one hand gingerly cupped beneath it, apparently keeping it from moving too much.  
“...What’s that, Equius?” asked the girl, suddenly perked up and curious.

“A gift,” he replied simply, bringing it up in one hand and placing the little bundle into Nepeta’s two. A fold of the fabric fell away to reveal a tiny pink nose, and then out popped a little white furred head. Nepeta’s favorite animal, in a particularly rare fur shade that had taken quite a bit of string-pulling to get ahold of.

“A cat!” Nepeta squealed, overjoyed. She was loud enough that the kitten blinked its yellow eyes at her in surprise, and a few nearby guests turned to glance over for a moment.  
“Nepeta, manners,” Equius reprimanded, shooting a glare that made the curious glancers lose interest in a hurry, “You’re a Lady, act as such.”  
Nepeta was unapologetic, hugging the kitten with one arm and Equius with the other. “Thank you, thank you, thank you, Equius! I love him!”

Subdued as he could possibly force himself to be, Equius smiled to himself. “You are welcome, Nepeta. Be gentle with him. He’s still only a baby.”  
“I’ll be careful,” she promised, kissing the nose of the kitten she was clearly falling in love with already. “I think I’ll call him Pounce.”  
“A worthy name,” Equius agreed with a nod.

The girl with the patron of the Rogue and the boy with the patron of the Heir sat together in the back pew of a church, light from the stained glass window above them painting them both in shades of indigo as they played with a cat. A most unlikely place for most unlikely friends. But only the Twelves really understood some things. And that was just fine with them.

**Author's Note:**

> Nepeta cleft lip headcanon openly stolen from tumblr user summoningspazzy. If I wrote it in a way that offends anybody, please let me know so I can right it.


End file.
